Julia Collins Jeopardy Promo

William K says:

“Kinda funny that it seems like more people are rooting for Julia to win more games than just that 11th one. Yet she’s not getting an eleventh of the publicity that Chu got during his run!”

It’s a sad fact about publicity that “flashy”, whether it’s in a positive sense or not so positive, is what grabs headlines.

On the one hand, the Jeopardy audience regulars generally have their favorites and Julia is right in the wheelhouse for that honor, but someone like Arthur Chu gets attention, both good and bad, for his slashing style of play. Arthur’s method was an aggressive, board jumping attack in search of Daily Doubles and he was not afraid to risk large sums in many cases.

In the Jeopardy culture of civility Chu’s style made him a villain. In his defense he showed a great deal of poise, particularly in the heat of the moment when a juicy sum was placed on the table to be won or lost.

Personally, I had very little beef with Arthur Chu but I did tire of him a bit at the moment when he got visibly annoyed for being ruled against on a mispronunciation that he had clearly faulted on –it was a 5,000 dollar Daily Double in which Chu answered very noticeably, “Frances McDarmand”.

Sure, Arthur could have been perhaps a bit more tactful in some respects, but I thought he was within the unspoken Jeopardy rules of personal protocol from my perspective. Frankly, Andrew Moore played a similar slashing style last season, and I found him less likeable than Arthur Chu.

Bottom line for me: My internal “Jeopardy fairness monitor” tends to pull for players who, in various ways, show that they have a solid Jeopardy aptitude, which crucially includes sound wagering skills. Nonetheless, once the qualified player has made it to likely TOC status I generally prefer to see their run end relatively soon so they aren’t hogging up winnings, especially if the evidence suggests that they are already comfortably wealthy beyond their Jeopardy winnings.

For example, see the wiki entry for Julia Collins’ Kenilworth, IL, “village” of residence:

Excerpt:

Kenilworth is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States, 15 miles (24 km) north of downtown Chicago. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 2,513. It is the newest of the nine suburban North Shore communities bordering Lake Michigan, and is the only one developed as a planned community. Kenilworth has a reputation as being the wealthiest and the most exclusive community in the Midwest. In January 2011, Forbes.com ranked Kenilworth as the second most affluent neighborhood in the United States, naming it “the most exclusive neighborhood in the Midwest, with estimated median household income of $247,000. Even after the housing slump the average house in Kenilworth sells for about $1 million.”

P.S. I looked up Kenilworth on a whim, since I couldn’t place it on my mental map (geography is a personal speciality). Eye opening info it seemed to me.